Conan calls out Japanese anime character Detective Conan

Conan O’Brien says the Japanese anime and manga character Detective Conan has been ripping him off since 1994, and now he’s calling him out.

Conan O’Brien has something to say about a certain Japanese cartoon character…

Last night on Conan on TBS, O’Brien had to get something off his chest. He reveals to his audience that in nearly every country in the world, O’Brien is always the first thing to come up whenever you google the name “Conan.” The one exception here is apparently Japan, who has another Conan that’s apparently more popular there than O’Brien is everywhere else.

Of course, this person we speak of is Detective Conan. As O’Brien explains, the character is a “man who’s trapped in a child’s body and solves crimes.” O’Brien can’t help but already see some similarities, pointing to himself as someone trapped in a child’s body. Wondering what was going on with this Detective Conan thing, O’Brien decided to look further into the character. You can watch the segment below:

“Like me, Japanese Conan has long skinny legs,” O’Brien explains. “He has distinctive hair, he always wears a suit, spends all day asking people questions, is extremely cartoonish, and again, a man trapped in a child’s body!” O’Brien also shows an alleged picture of himself as a schoolboy, wearing a suit and glasses remarkably similar to that of Detective Conan’s.

As O’Brien goes on to explain, Detective Conan was created in 1994, just one year after O’Brien went on the air. Accusing someone of ripping him off for all these years, O’Brien jokes that he expects a royalty check for “3 trillion yen” which can be sent to “The More Famous Conan,” along with this studio address.

O’Brien’s show will drop to a half hour format beginning in 2019. You can watch Conan when it airs weeknights on the TBS network.